Gesture based interface for image annotation

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaGiven the complexity of visual information, multimedia content search presents more problems than textual search. This level of complexity is related with the difficulty of doing automatic image and video tagging, using a set of keywords to describe the content. Generally, this annotation is performed manually (e.g., Google Image) and the search is based on pre-defined keywords. However, this task takes time and can be dull. In this dissertation project the objective is to define and implement a game to annotate personal digital photos with a semi-automatic system. The game engine tags images automatically and the player role is to contribute with correct annotations. The application is composed by the following main modules: a module for automatic image annotation, a module that manages the game graphical interface (showing images and tags), a module for the game engine and a module for human interaction. The interaction is made with a pre-defined set of gestures, using a web camera. These gestures will be detected using computer vision techniques interpreted as the user actions. The dissertation also presents a detailed analysis of this application, computational modules and design, as well as a series of usability tests